The Knicks are one win away from their first championship in over 50 years!
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Phil Mickelson’s club membership revoked amid allegations of inappropriate contact
Mickelson was one of the game’s most popular players when, at the age of 51, he became the oldest man to win a major with victory at the 2021 US PGA Championship at Kiawah Island.
He was a fan favourite with an affable demeanour and daring style of play. He was regarded as a family man who attracted big money sponsorship deals, a marquee player at every tournament where he competed.
But he was subsequently embroiled in a number of controversies. The 55-year-old was among the first recruits to LIV Golf, despite making derogatory comments about the Saudi Arabian backers of the breakaway tour.
In the wake of those inflammatory quotes, published by journalist Alan Shipnuck, Mickelson took himself away from the game, missing the 2022 Masters and the defence of his US PGA title.
He reappeared at LIV’s inaugural event at the Centurion Club near Hemel Hempstead in June 2022. “I’ve said and done a lot of things that I regret,” Mickelson said to reporters at his pre-tournament press conference.
“I’m sorry for that and sorry for the hurt it caused a lot of people.”
As well as being a central and divisive figure in golf’s civil war, prompted by LIV’s emergence as a rival to the PGA Tour, Mickelson was also embroiled in controversy away from the course.
He was involved in a US federal investigation into insider trading that led to the imprisonment of one of his friends, Billy Walters.
The American bookmaker then alleged in a book published after his release that Mickelson had waged a billion dollars in sporting bets.
Such stories of excessive gambling prompted the charismatic left-hander to say: “I have also been very open about my gambling addiction.
“I have previously conveyed my remorse, took responsibility, have gotten help, have been fully committed to therapy that has positively impacted me and I feel good about where I am now.”
Mickelson has played only one LIV tournament this year, in South Africa, missing the rest of their schedule to prioritise “a family health matter”.
This absence from competitive golf is not thought to relate to the alleged incident at the Farms Golf Club.
He missed this year’s Masters and US PGA despite being eligible for both majors. He will not play at next week’s US Open, an event where he has been runner up six times. It is the only major he has yet to win.
That championship is being staged at Shinnecock Hills, where in 2018 Mickelson stunned fans by hitting his ball while it was still rolling to prevent it leaving a green.
It was an unprecedented incident in top level golf and while he was penalised two shots, many observers believe he should have been thrown out of that tournament.
This latest alleged incident is more serious and provides another hit to his reputation.
The Farms is located 25 miles northeast of San Diego close to where Mickelson grew up.
An ultra exclusive country club, it was a long-time base for the 45 time PGA Tour winner, somewhere he relied on to prepare his game for the biggest tournaments.
Apollo picks Austin, Texas, for second US headquarters, snubbing NYC Mayor Mamdani: report
Apollo Global Management has reportedly picked Austin, Texas, as the city that will host its second US headquarters, as Wall Street firms look to escape Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tax-and-spend, left-wing policies.
After narrowing down the choices to Texas and Florida, the Marc Rowan-led powerhouse chose Austin over apparent concerns about the lack of private schools in the Sunshine State, the Financial Times reported Friday.
Apollo manages money for pension funds, insurers and wealthy investors — and controls more than $800 billion in assets. The firm runs its empire from a Midtown tower at 9 W. 57th St., with views over Central Park.
Now it wants a major base far from Manhattan.
The firm says the move is about talent, according to the FT. Apollo wants to recruit workers who don’t want to live in New York — or pay New York prices.
Choosing a new HQ outside the Big Apple marks a significant blow to city coffers.
Apollo paid a whopping $1.276 billion in income taxes in 2025, up from $1.062 billion the year before. While filings don’t break down how much of that went to New York City, it stands to lose a hefty revenue stream as the firm looks to expand elsewhere.
Citadel — whose CEO Ken Griffin was targeted by Mamdani in a bizarre tax-the-rich video — also doubled down on expanding outside New York.
The Apollo and Citadel moves are part of “a troubling pattern taking shape” in the city, Steve Fulop, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, previously told The Post.
“The solution is that the administration needs to have a real pro business agenda that has support of the broader business corporate community,” he added. “We haven’t seen this yet and there is a sense of urgency to getting this going. It is a competitive landscape and without a strategy companies will look to more friendly places.”
The Post has approached an Apollo spokesperson for comment.
Southern states have been proving attractive to big business. Low taxes and lighter regulation have already drawn Vanguard and Fidelity to Texas. Goldman Sachs is building a $500 million office tower in Dallas. Wells Fargo just opened a massive 850,000-square-foot campus outside the city.
Texas keeps rolling out the welcome mat. The state passed laws to lure companies to reincorporate there and opened special courts just for business disputes.
The Texas Stock Exchange plans to start trading this summer — and the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have both opened Texas outposts to compete.
Elon Musk, who moved his companies to the state, has urged other bosses to follow.
Austin offers Apollo the boon of no state income tax.
The capital city hosts deep-pocketed investors, including the fund that manages the University of Texas system’s $80 billion-plus endowment and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas — exactly the kind of clients Apollo courts.
The city boomed through the pandemic as a tech hub, with Meta, Google and Oracle all expanding there.
'It's all they're talking about': Scotland gripped by World Cup fever
Excitement is building ahead of Scotland’s first game in the men’s World Cup for 28 years.
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'We'll go crazy for a goal' – Excitement builds ahead of USA World Cup match
The BBC spoke to US fans at the Fifa Fan Festival in Los Angeles ahead of the team’s match against Paraguay.
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Austin Reaves seen with girlfriend Jenna amid $179 million free agency report
Austin Reaves’ five seasons with the Lakers have put him in a great position this offseason, as he’s set to become an unrestricted free agent.
Reaves has improved every season, and despite missing much of the Lakers’ 2025-26 campaign with injuries, he’s still going to get a bag from some team this summer.
It appears that at least one team is making its interest extremely evident. Dan Woike of The Athletic published a June 12 article that the Nets are preparing to offer Reaves a four-year, $179 million contract once free agency begins.
While Reaves is worth whatever amount of money a team is willing to pay him, the fact that Brooklyn is willing to offer $179 million is staggering and will make it difficult for the Lakers to match that and entice Reaves to stay.
Then again, the lifestyle that living in Los Angeles affords seems to be appreciated by Reaves and his longtime girlfriend, Jenna Barber.
These two have been together since 2014, as they met in high school in Newark, Ark. And the two are still going strong, evidenced by the many social media posts that Barber makes of her and Reaves.
One example of this was June 11, shortly before the report about the Nets’ free agency interest surfaced.
Barber posted a photo and a video of she and Reaves holding hands with a girl, who would seemingly be one of their nieces. The happy couple and the girl enjoyed their wholesome stroll.
Perhaps a ring awaits Barber, given that she has been with Reaves for over a decade. And perhaps a ring awaits Reaves if he re-signs with the Lakers in free agency.
World Cup chaos expected as travel plans for 50,000 fans still up in the air for first New Jersey game
Travel plans for nearly 50,000 World Cup fans are still up in the air a day before the almost sold-out game at Metlife Stadium in New Jersey Saturday night, The Post has learned.
Only 23,600 fans have either bought bus or train tickets to the East Rutherford stadium, which has been rebranded to New York New Jersey Stadium for the global event, and just under 3,500 parking spots have been sold as of Friday, according to data.
It’s unclear how the remaining 47,000 ticket holders plan on getting to the stadium for 6 p.m. kickoff between Brazil and Morocco.
Fans who take rideshares will be forced to walk 1.3 miles from the dropoff point to the stadium.
New Jersey Transit has faced weeks of backlash after NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill jacked the prices up on the World Cup route by 800% to $98 for a round-trip ticket
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul later came in with a cheaper option in the game, offering a $20 bus ticket to and from the stadium.
But that still hasn’t helped sales.
Only 12,900 bus tickets have been sold, according to the data.
Around 10,800 train tickets have been purchased, the numbers show.
World Cup officials are warning fans to use “official FIFA World Cup 2026 transportation only” — meaning, shuttles or NJ Transit train. Private vehicles and walking to the stadium are not allowed.
Time for California business lobby to grow a spine
That didn’t take long
The primary has only just ended, yet the California Chamber of Commerce (CalChamber) has already decided to endorse Xavier Becerra for governor.
Shouldn’t you wait until the candidates have had a chance to make their case?
After all, Becerra’s party has presided over the decimation of small business, and an exodus of big business from the state.
But CalChamber didn’t even try to compare the candidates’ policies.
Maybe that’s because Republican Steve Hilton’s policies are obviously better — so much so that it would be embarrassing to endorse the Democrat once policy had entered the equation.
In its statement endorsing Becerra, it explained that it was choosing him becausehe “can work productively with both the private sector and our state legislature.”
Work on what, exactly?
Becerra’s policies are uniquely anti-business.
He was one of the only candidates — even among Democrats — to support the state’s absurdly high gas taxes, which place a huge burden on businesses and households alike.
He supports California’s costly “green” energy policies, which have made energy more expensive and less reliable.
Becerra also backs includes the wasteful high-speed rail project, which is a national laughingstock.
CalChamber also cited Becerra’s “deep experience at the state and federal level.”
Let’s talk about that experience.
Becerra was a partisan Democrat who had achieved little in Washington before Jerry Brown brought him back to California to take over from Kamala Harris as attorney general.
He encountered a small problem: His law license had lapsed.
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Once that was sorted out, Becerra presided over a crime wave that the state has only just begun to overcome.
He specialized in suing the Trump administration, not fighting crime. The $20 billion that was stolen from the state’s unemployment department during the pandemic, through fraud? That was on his watch.
As U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Becerra was almost invisible, notable only for imposing vaccine mandates and for losing track of migrant children.
He did nothing to tackle the rising health costs that are placing a huge burder on public and private employers alike.
If there is something Becerra has ever done for business, or for economic growth, CalChamber didn’t mention it.
And if there were some pro-business policy CalChamber could cite, it would have. It didn’t.
It’s clear what the game is here. Democrats are likely to win. So CalChamber is climbing on the bandwagon early, hoping to trade its early support for Bacerra now, for a seat at the table later.
“California needs collaboration, not conflict,” CalChamber says.
But sometimes you have to speak up.
California business needs strong and fearless advocates who will defend jobs, growth, and opportunity.
In short: The business lobby needs to grow a spine.
‘Find Your Friends’ Shudder Review: Stream It or Skip It?
I’m tempted to retitle Find Your Friends (now on Shudder) Bad Decisions: The Movie. Maybe that’s not fair, considering the premise situates five young college-age women within a predatory world that far too often sees them as prey — but it’s tough to defend the manner with which they throw caution to the wind. The directorial debut of Izabel Pakzad ends up playing as a party-girl cautionary tale of sorts, but whether it functions as anything thematically or tonally coherent is the primary issue here.
FIND YOUR FRIENDS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: It’s a Spring Breakers scene right off the bat: A yacht party with loud techno bumpin’, lotsa drugs and booze, scantily clad young women, and male gazes everywhere. Everyone’s horny, of course. Hornier than one of those goats with four gigantic horns. Shaking their thangs and talking crass about dat ass are Amber (Helena Howard), Lavinia (Bella Thorne), Zosia (Zion Moreno), Lola (Chloe Cherry, Euphoria) and Maddy (Sophia Ali). They’re college pals on an anything-goes vacation where the goal seems to be female bonding, alcohol poisoning and getting some wang, all in the most devil-may-care manner possible, and calling it “an adventure.” “A toast to the hos with the most!” Lola bellows before the latest of lord-knows-how-many rounds of shots, which pretty much sums up the intellectual content of this endeavor.
We follow Amber’s POV for much of the film, and an incident with a guy rumored to have a big ’un sets an ominous tone for what’s to come. To make her ex jealous, Amber locks lips with him. He wants to go further. She doesn’t. She escapes the situation, liquors up even harder and smashes a glass punchbowl over his head, turning him into a bloody mess. The five ladies exit the party, exchanging insults with the hosts like nine-year-olds butting heads over a gaga ball point. They head out to Joshua Tree, where they pull their big expensive-ass Jeep up to a big expensive-ass AirBnB and christen it: “This is a house to get fuuuuuckeddddd uppppp in!” hoots Lavinia. If there’s a Pee-Wee’s Playhouse-style word of the day, it’s “Wooooooooooooo!” And all the noise pisses off the itchy neighbor (Chris Bauer), who isn’t nice about asking them to turn down the EDM, or about their apparent status as rich kids stomping around the Normal Folks’ town.
But Amber isn’t quite right after that incident. No doubt, it was sexual assault. And her friends waver between victim-blaming (“You were all over that guy!”) and being supportive in a superficial, nonspecific way. And by “being supportive,” I mean, “they just take a shitload of molly.” And she washes it down with copious amounts of booze. They head to a warehouse party hosted by a rock-star DJ who beelines for Amber. He seems sincere at first, maybe an antidote to the yacht creep, but no. Men in this movie are all pukes and cretins. That doesn’t stop Lola and Amber from accepting cocaine from the pukiest, most cretinous-looking crew of cretinous pukes at the party, then naively not thinking they need to do anything in return. The ensuing ordeal(s) end up testing the tensile strength of these five besties’ friendships, which may not be so strong after all. Me, I’m thinking Amber should’ve found some better friends.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Find Your Friends skims the surface of Spring Breakers, Death Proof and Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge for style and theme, and calls it a day.
Performance Worth Watching: Howard does her damnedest to render Amber with the nuance and complexity an aimless and deserves
Sex And Skin: Lots of skimpy clothes and one particularly graphic scene that’s the absolute polar opposite of sexy.
Our Take: Find Your Friends is thematically reductive enough to make Nancy Reagan’s dim “Just Say No” campaign seem like a rigorous philosophical treatise. Its attempt to depict the psychological fallout of sexual assault on the young-adult mind is noble, but ultimately lost in the simplistic sensationalism of Pakzad’s screenplay. These characters are frustratingly one-dimensional. The core women bulbs of the dimmest type, the men either braying, hungry wolves or get-off-my-lawn types (many also have guns, of course), both playing heavily into the stereotypes of a socioeconomic divide lurking beneath the surface. Amber and her friends make decisions rendering themselves so cluelessly vulnerable, their inability to assess danger — even the screamingly obvious, sirens-blaring, neon-arrows-pointing kind they face in this movie — defies the commonest of common sense.
Parts of the film are ultrarealistic, bracing in their intensity. Other parts are elevated, flirting with the pulpy fodder of direct-to-VHS revenge flicks. The former points Find Your Friends toward a story about the struggle for female agency in a hostile world, but the latter undermines it with darkly shocking quasi-thrills. Amber and her friends rarely do or say anything of substance. They either squabble like tweens who’ve watched too much Euphoria or whoop it up with vacuous glee, coming off like wafer-thin facsimiles of Mean Girls archetypes. During one of the film’s most introspective moments, Maddy manages to muster up a bon mot that’s representative of the disorientingly vapid inner lives of these characters: “Why not just treat every day like a vacay?” You’ll want to grab these people by their lapels and shout, “STOP BEING SO UNSMART!” in their faces, assuming they’d ever wear anything without spaghetti straps, of course.
Stirred into the pot are depictions of substance abuse and the fallout from trauma, within the context of these characters’ misguided notions of you-go-girl empowerment. But the substance of these depictions is sorely lacking. These five women are such a deeply flawed unit, it can be hard to empathize with their pain; that’s what happens when their dysfunction seems to be engineered to telegraph the plot’s twists and turns. After a third-act scene of gruesome mutilation, Pakzad directs the story toward grim hopelessness, rendering it a primal scream into an abyss. If we understood who these women truly are, we might’ve even heard it.
Our Call: Find Your Friends is ultimately just lost. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
West Hollywood staple WeHo Bistro closed over vermin infestation
A popular West Hollywood bistro has been closed due to a vermin infestation, according to a recent Los Angeles Public Health Department notice.
A LA County Public Health rep told The California Post that an inspection found five live roaches in the kitchen area at WeHo Bistro, and dead roaches in the bar and dry goods storage area.
WeHo Bistro received two “major” violations, including one for the vermin-related category, and one “minor” violation during a recent inspection.
The notice said the restaurant, popular for its “casual French flair and inspiration,” closed on Wednesday and is classed in the “RESTAURANT (31-60) SEATS HIGH RISK” category.
It docked the bistro 11 points for “No insects, rodents, birds or animals present,” four points for “Food contact surfaces: clean and sanitized” and two points for “Proper hot and cold holding temperatures.”
The bistro earned a “C” public health grade for the inspection, the rep said.
A message posted on WeHo Bistro’s website said: “Due to technical difficulties, WeHo Bistro will be closed on Friday, June 12, and Saturday, June 13.”
An Instagram story from the establishment said the place was closed “due to unforeseen circumstances” and was “hoping to welcoming you back on Sunday.”
The bistro is owned by Jeff Douek, who previously told WeHo Online that he wanted a familiar place for his patrons to dine at.
“So my goal was to have a place people want to come to all the time, and to embrace where we were and bring a little life to this corner,” he said.
He said most of his customers are repeat patrons, some of whom remark that they feel like they’re in a different place when they dine there.
“One of the things that I noticed from talking to people here every day is WeHo Bistro reminds them of a place they like,” he said. “Another place than from where they come from, whether it’s Montreal, Paris, New York.”
The California Post reached out to WeHo Bistro for comment.